


What Comes Next

by reneegayde



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: An Obsene Amount of Food, Feelings, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slow Burn, This is burning faster than I intended., gentle angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-06 04:53:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16381784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reneegayde/pseuds/reneegayde
Summary: Eddie couldn't get rid of Venom that easily, apparently.Filling in the time between the fight with Riot and the final scenes of the movie (and probably beyond), Eddie has to learn to live with Venom and Venom has to keep his host viable.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Another fill-in-the-gap nobody asked for. 
> 
> If you're expecting plot, there's not going to be much. This is just domestic nonsense and old married couple shenanigans. Sorry.

Eddie doesn’t feel the heat of the explosion until half a second before his back hits the water, before Venom is finally too weak to hold them together.

Up until then, his entire focus was set on panicking. Venom forcing him to focus so the two could fight more effectively.  **This is a team effort, Eddie.** Watching the symbiote crawl toward him as Eddie lay on the ground, bleeding and dying. Feeling the life return back to him as quickly as it had been escaping as the two bonded for the third time. Then Venom taking full control of their body to go after Riot, just as the ship took off and Eddie was sure it was too late. Venom was more optimistic, or crazy, or probably (definitely) both. Together they are able to leap and latch on to the ship just before it is out of reach, climbing the hull as easy as a monkey climbing a tree.

**_Trust us Eddie,_ ** _ the symbiote assured through their bond, able to pick out the apprehension among everything else in Eddie’s literal flood of emotions. Eddie didn’t. They both knew that. But Eddie didn’t have much of a choice in the matter as they reached the viewport of the ship, Riot staring back at them in all their majorly pissed off glory. _

**_Traitor!_ ** _ Riot growled, and Venom’s grin split impossibly wider. _

**_Have a nice life!_ ** _ Venom, or maybe Eddie, taunted. And then they jumped. _

Eddie doesn’t remember much after that. There isn’t enough time to. Venom digs the blade that pierced Eddie’s chest moments ago into the hull of the ship. It explodes, knocking the two back as they fell. **Goodbye Eddie.** _Venom, no!_ Blinding light, both of them screaming. Eddie out of fear as they fell and Venom out of the pain from the _heat_ and the effort it took to protect Eddie as long as they could.

Separating is hard. It was always an unpleasant feeling, more so for Venom who would  _ die _ without a host, but for Eddie even the first time was like losing a part of himself. Now the stakes were higher. Eddie wants the protection and Venom wants to protect. But the heat is too much, and they both feel Venom getting weaker and the symbiote is able to protect Eddie just long enough for him to safely splash down in the water before the explosion can burn through him too.

===

Three hours later, just before the sun starts to rise, and Eddie has finally managed to cross the city and find his apartment. His shitty, shitty apartment rendered even more shitty by the absolute chaos the Life Foundation assholes had brought. Eddie steps on a forgotten, burnt tater tot as he tries to pick his way through the mess and he can’t help but think that it’s a perfect metaphor for his life right now.

Venom would probably call him dramatic, then agree with him. Eddie can’t help but notice the emptiness within him, like losing a body part. The damn parasite must have eaten an organ or two on his way out or something.

There’s just the slightest hint of anger in the back of his mind that he isn’t quite sure belongs to him. He chalks it up to being his imagination. Besides, Venom was gone. Maybe not dead, but gone. Eddie saw him burning. Felt their connection break. Venom was gone, whatever that may mean, and it was just Eddie now.

He digs around in the fridge for something to eat. Comes out with a beer and half a box of leftover pizza. Returns a few minutes later with an unfinished beer he pours down the sink and an empty pizza box. Venom didn’t like alcohol, the taste or the consequences. It almost felt, Eddie didn’t know,  _ wrong _ to drink now even without the symbiote scolding him. He has no explanation for the pizza. Four slices of a large triple-meat was a lot of food. All of the food – normal people food or actual people – he and Venom had consumed must have enlarged his stomach. Or something.

Eddie regrets wasting the beer.

He’s not entirely sure when he fell asleep or how long he was out, but it’s late in the evening when Eddie wakes up sore and  _ hungry _ .

“I don’t have anything,” he mumbles, still convinced he’s dead. “You ate it all, you fucking parasite.”

There’s the feeling of anger again, stronger than the night before but Eddie still waved it off as him being crazy.  _ Need more sleep.  _ It wasn’t an incredibly unreasonable assumption after the shit he’s been through the past few days.

The hunger is persistent, though, and Eddie groans and picks his sorry ass up off the couch, the one functioning brain cell left carefully stepping around the mess on the floor. He isn’t sure he has the mental capacity to take care of that right now. Food first, dealing with the aftermath of the weirdest night of his life second.

Eddie wants to cry when he finds a package of pop tarts in the kitchen. It isn’t ideal, but it’s likely the only remaining edible food in his entire apartment and _fuck_ he’s kind of desperate. It takes some extra effort in his sleep-addled brain, but he’s able to tear the reflective packaging off and practically inhales the poor excuse for breakfast.

Once he’s convinced he  _ isn’t  _ starving to death, Eddie finally takes the opportunity to really assess the damage. Broken window. Furniture and papers and whatever other of his belongings got misplaced in the fight scattered across the floor. And of course, the tater tots.

The tater tots that were… gone?

_ What the fuck? _

Eddie knows he isn’t desperate enough to eat off the floor. But the lack of food on the floor means that  _ someone  _ had to have eaten it.

_ Probably rats. _

The thought isn’t comforting, but hey, it was better than the alternative.

Eddie finishes his pop tart and considers what the fuck he’s supposed to do with his life now. The obvious, of course, being getting another damn job, which was absolutely not something he was looking forward to. What little savings he had just wasn’t enough to survive on for much longer. Especially not with San Francisco rent.

“Well, I’m definitely not getting the security deposit back.” He says, mostly to himself because Venom is gone.  _ Great, still talking to myself.  _ “So thanks for that, Vee.” As if all the blame went to the symbiote. 

And he still stands there, feeling sorry for himself, as one does. Feels numb but also vaguely feels like something’s crawling around in his insides.

**Loser.**

Great! Now he’s hearing things!

**Hungry** .

Yeah, sure, he’ll just—

“...Venom?”

His answer comes in the form of a soft warmth flooding his chest, gentle and weak but very much there.

“Holy shit.” Eddie is in awe for a moment or two before snapping back to the present. “Shit, Vee, I— What do you need? Wh-what can I do?”

He’s definitely not crying, that would be kind of sad.

**Food.**

“Ha. Doesn’t surprise me, you animal. Are...you dying, or?”

**No. We are not dying.  
  
** “Good. Good. Uh, how did you...?”

**Questions later. Need food.**

“Shit. Right. Hang on, buddy.”

He feels the symbiote, smaller and weaker than before, coil back up near his heart, protected by his rib cage. Eddie is almost out the door before it dawns on him that he desperately needs a shower if he is going to go out in public. Venom all but growls within him.

**Eddie…**

“Come on, man… Can I at least change my clothes? Two seconds.”

Eddie takes the lack of response to be “yes” and trips over himself and all the shit on the floor as he rushes into the bedroom to find something remotely clean to wear. He can take a shower when Venom’s happy. One change of clothes and frantic search for his keys and wallet later, and the two are out the door.

“Alright, buddy. Let’s get you feeling better.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO much for all the comments! They had me in tears, not gonna lie. It's refreshing to get feedback!  
> I.... don't think updates are going to come this close together in the future, but I got so hyped up from all the comments and reads and WOW this fandom is insane.

Venom is quiet for the next several days, only surfacing every few hours to demand that Eddie eat something. By the second day, Eddie has resorted to keeping a snack on him at all times. It’s enough to keep Venom happy between meals, allowing Eddie to get work done. “Work” being job hunting, which is going about as well as one might expect. Despite being  **_right_ ** about the whole Carlton Drake issue, word spreads fast in the industry and right now it was just too dangerous to hire the guy who rushed into a story with what they could assume was nothing to go on.    
  
It doesn’t help that Eddie feels like  _ shit _ . He can’t quit pinpoint exactly what he’s feeling, but he knows it isn’t right. Besides the depression plaguing him for the last six months, of course. Can’t forget that. He felt vaguely like he was sick, but mostly without the aches and pains associated with it. Brief fevers and nausea as if his body is trying to reject it’s new visitor. Which, honestly, wasn’t too crazy of an idea.   
  
Eddie huffs and puts his laptop on the coffee table, shoves another handful of walnuts in his mouth. He feels Venom shift within him, almost as if the symbiote is stretching. Eddie expects him to surface, but he slowly settles back down.    
  
“You doing alright?”    
  
Venom flutters within him, evidently too tired to grace him with a response.   
  
“Not a good enough answer, Vee,” Eddie warns. “I feel like shit, and I know you feel worse.”   
  
**_Eddie…_ ** The symbiote practically whines. Eddie feels hungry.   
  
He sighs. “I’m not… eating any heads, alright? We’re going to get you feeling better, then maybe, possibly, I’ll let  **_you_ ** eat someone.” ****_  
_ ****_  
_ **Hungry.** ****  
****  
“I’m working on it!”   
  
**Not very well.** ****_  
_ ****_  
_ Eddie huffs again. “Alright, what do you want, then?” He regrets it immediately, of course. Worst case scenario the symbiote would demand and entire human, best case they’d be stuck in a loop of arguing over what to eat. A loop which, given his track record with Anne, he’d lose. “You liked tater tots, didn’t you?” And the infamous garbage chicken, but he didn’t want to think about that right now. “What else?”   
****  
**These aren’t so bad.** ****  
****  
“What, the walnuts? They’re expensive as hell, Vee. Enjoy them while they last.”    
  
**I could eat your liver.** ****  
  
“Please don’t, thanks.” And while he’s sure the symbiote is mostly joking, he considers more ways to feed Venom. “Alright, at least tell me that you’re feeling better.”    
  
**Yes.**   
  
“Good! Good. That means I’m doing something right. Which, by the way, means you don’t need to eat anyone.”    
****  
**It would help.** ****  
****  
_ That’s fair _ , Eddie thinks, but he definitely doesn’t want to do that. “Okay, hear me out. I’ll buy a big ass chicken  _ if  _ you let me cook it this time.” The symbiote seems to consider this, but they both know that right now food is food and Venom doesn’t have a lot of room to argue in his current state. “Deal?”   
  
Venom bristles for a moment, but eventually agrees.  **Deal** .   
  
===   
  
Two hours later and the pair can be found sprawled out on the floor of Eddie’s apartment, surrounded by the remains of one very expensive trip to the store. The agreed upon chicken never made it through the door, but that’s okay because Eddie thankfully found a pre-cooked one. The rest of the food was picked out by Venom, with the one rule being  _ it had to be dead _ . Chocolate wrappers, half a bag of walnuts, and tater tot crumbs were all that remained now. Venom was happy and warm where he sat somewhere in Eddie’s chest.   
  
“Better?”   
  
**Yes,** the symbiote practically purred.  **Now you can feel good.** ****  
****  
Eddie almost choked on the piece of chocolate he was eating. “Uh… what?”   
  
Venom, for the first time since they reunited, takes the opportunity to emerge from Eddie’s chest. All tooth and judgemental stare and obscene amount of tongue and drool. It’s no less creepy than the first time, but Eddie is reasonably sure he’s not about to be Venom’s next meal, so he just gingerly pushes the head a bit further from his face. **“I’ve been too weak to heal you.”** ****  
****  
“Heal me? I thought I was the perfect host, or whatever.”   
  
“ **We can’t achieve symbiosis unless we are both healthy. I’ve been too weak, and you don’t take care of yourself. I’ve had to improvise.”** ****  
****  
“Yeah, news flash, this-” Eddie gestures to all the food “-is not exactly the healthiest-- Wait. Improvise?” He sits up, Venom who bumps against his chest.  _ “Are you eating my organs?!” _   
  
Venom’s eyes narrow and he reels back slightly.  **“I would have died by now if I didn’t,”** he says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.  **“But now I can fix you!”**   
  
“Okay,” Eddie says, not convinced, because frankly he has maybe two reasons to be. Venom, satisfied, sinks back into Eddie’s skin. The symbiote spreads out, so thin that Eddie can’t pinpoint where he is, before remassing somewhere around his kidney.    
  
Eddie leaps to his feet so fast he he startles both of them.   
  
“WOAH woah, Vee, don’t eat that.”   
  
**I already did.** ****  
****  
“ _ What? _ Okay, we need to talk about-”   
****  
**I was dying, Eddie.** ****  
****  
Well, when he put it like that…  _ Shit.  _ “You’re better though, right?”    
  
**Yes.** ****  
****  
“So you don’t need my organs anymore.”   
  
**Technically.** ****  
****  
“I’m not letting you eat me on a technicality, Vee. Stop that.”    
  
**_I’m fixing it._ ** ****  
****  
_ He’s fixing it.  _ Venom slinks back to his favored spot in Eddie’s chest like some sort of scolded dog. Sigh. “Alright, alright, do your thing. I’m going to sleep, please don’t eat me.” At the absence of a quip from the symbiote, Eddie shoves more chocolate in his face as some sort of an apology before cleaning up the rest of the mess so he and/or Venom don’t eat off the floor again.    
  
He vaguely remembers something from a friend’s wedding. _ Never go to bed angry _ . Were they fighting? It felt like they were fighting. Venom does his little dispersal trick again, clearly not wanting to talk about it.  _ That answers that. _


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because it's normal to lay in bed on a Sunday morning and talk about feelings with your sentient alien goo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I blame Doomsayer on the Venom Discord for all of the feelings. This was going to be a MUCH more lighthearted discussion of feelings. Venom is a drama queen but Eddie is probably worse.
> 
> Back to your regularly scheduled nonsense after the break.

Eddie decides to rejoin the living sometime early the next morning, when the _fucking pigeons_ outside his window become unbearable. There’s also the distinct — at least to him — feeling of Venom rifiling through his brain like it's some kind of card catalogue. The symbiote seems unaware that it’s been detected and continues, leaving Eddie with brief indecipherable flashes of thoughts and memories. Weird, but if the thing was going to be living inside his head there wasn’t much he could do about it.

He still feels bad about last night. Venom’s abrupt change in mood reminded him too much about fights with Anne. It wasn’t anything the two hadn’t discussed during their brief time as one, though back then Eddie had been much more stressed out and in no fit state of mind to register any of the shared thoughts or feelings from his other half. _Other half_ , fuck, it was like they were married or something.

It’s Sunday morning, and Eddie is far too disheartened by the preceding week of failed interview attempts to hop out of bed and do even _more_ job hunting. And without a job, well, there was quite frankly no reason to be awake this early. Options: stay in bed all day or do something productive.

Okay, not _all_ day, but as long as Venom isn’t demanding food he’s taking the moment to relax, dammit. So he sits in silence for a while, throwing an arm over his eyes to block out the intrusive sunlight starting to pour through the window, and actually almost drifts off again before Venom gets bored with digging through Eddie’s brains and starts skittering around elsewhere in his body.

There’s no way Venom doesn’t realize he’s awake, Eddie thinks. And the symbiote’s silence is concerning.

“Hey, Vee—“ Venom startles, like he’s caught in the act, and slowly retracts to hide somewhere near Eddie’s liver. Eddie ignores the urge to laugh at the whole image of it. “What’s up? Are you mad?”

No answer, but Eddie is convinced that if he could see Venom, he’d be getting _the look_ . Somewhere between _“You’re goddamn right I am”_ and _“Are you serious?”_

“What, is this about last night?”

**You don’t trust me.**

What.  
  
“I don’t... what?” Eddie says, ever eloquent. “Is this about the eating my organs thing? Look, Vee, people don’t like having their organs eaten. You can’t just… do that.”  
  
**I wouldn’t hurt you, Eddie, but I’m still too weak to repair the damage.** Venom sounds almost… ashamed? That’s new. **_We_ ** **are getting stronger every day. I’m helping.**

Eddie sighs slowly. Counts to ten. Makes it to about seven before he realizes that fighting over his body with his new alien is a lost cause. Plus, he can’t help but feel bad for pressing the matter. Venom was clearly doing his best. The arm covering his face moves to wedge under his pillow and his opposite hand scratches at his bare chest. Nervous habit.

“Alright. Alright. I guess it’s just been awhile since anyone’s actually cared.” He regrets the words immediately. They sound too much like a whiny teenager. Venom has moved to just below the hand on his chest and bubbles with a brief flurry of emotions.

 **I want what’s best for** **_us._ **

“Because you’re stuck in this body. You could leave.” This seems to piss off the symbiote even more. Like he’s clawing to get out.

 **I could. But I would** **_never_ ** **find another host like you.**

“Like _what_ , Venom? It’s all about the ‘perfect host’ with you!”

Venom practically bursts from his chest, teeth bared. Eddie doesn’t even flinch this time. **“Without you, I would** **_die_ ** **like the others. We can be better, Eddie. You are a perfect host, but I was weak when we first bonded. I had to get my strength back. Just like now.”** Venom hovers dangerously close to Eddie’s face again, not explicitly threatening but very much _there_.

And Eddie feels… he feels _weird_ . On the one hand, what one may consider the rational side of him, he knows Venom is an _alien_ . Sci-fi movies were _very clear_ in their message that you just _can’t trust an alien_ . But he has that nagging feeling that Venom is his _friend,_ has saved his life. Fuck, they saved the _planet_ together. Venom betrayed his own kind to do it. If the symbiote had any malicious intent, he was damn good at hiding it.

 **“I don’t, Eddie.”** Venom assures, softer now.

“Stop that,” Eddie says half-heartedly, still a bit unnerved knowing the symbiote can read his thoughts. His throat feels tight and he rubs at his eyes and finds the beginnings of tears. He lets out a huff of air that sounds suspiciously like a half-sob. “Okay. Okay. Look, Vee, I’ve had a rough few months. My engagement’s called off, my ex has already moved on, I lost my job… Humans don’t normally take that kind of stress well.”

Venom retracts, not fully absorbing back under Eddie’s skin, but back to his true, gooey form and envelope Eddie’s hand that rests on his chest. It’s… comforting.

**She hurt you.**

And nope, he’s not having this conversation right now. It’s too much for one day. Eddie clears his throat, utters a quick “Yeah, she did.” And then he’s shaking the goo-covered hand like he’s trying to shoo Venom away, but the symbiote just travels down his arm before burrowing back under his skin.

Eddie takes it as a cue to drag his sorry ass out of bed and try to be marginally productive. Or at least feed Venom before they end up eating the neighbor. Venom’s quiet while Eddie takes a shower, which honestly Eddie is thankful for because that’s not a time he wants to be having a conversation. But he’s still quiet when Eddie starts milking around the kitchen, and that’s weirder.

“You want McDonald’s for breakfast?”

Venom’s preoccupied his his mind again, probably looking at memories of Anne since Eddie refused to grace him with any information.

“Vee.”

**Hmm?**

“Hungry?”

**Always.**

“McDonalds?”

This time he has Venom’s attention. The subtle warmth associated with a happy symbiote spreads from the center of Eddie’s chest. **_Yesss..._ **


End file.
